On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 12:52:08PM -0400, Stephen Leake wrote:
> Peter Hermann <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>
> > My default settings of options would be
> > line_length => 79
> > software and hardwaretools of all ages without problems
>
> Ada is a "tool for the next century"; let's not carry the "support
> legacy stuff" too far. There's no excuse for a line length limit of
> less than 120.
I disagree with that rather dogmatic statement. It is true that text
files with 120 characters/line are no problem as such, but I have
found "sdiff" to be a very useful and important tool for me. With lines
up to 80 characters long, it is just about possible to get a readable
"sdiff" listing in a window of width around 165 characters. I suspect
a window of width 240 would be unreadable, at least to me with eyes
over half a century old. With a judicious choice of "use" clauses, I
can easily keep my code within 80 characters per line.
It helps that I indent calls in the style
Procedure_Name (
Par1 => Val1,
Par2 => Val2);
and not as
Procedure_Name (Par1 => Val1,
Par2 => Val2);
which in my eyes make the code look very irregular, since the length
of procedure names varies.
Just an opinion of course.
Niklas Holsti
[log in to unmask] Space Systems Finland Ltd.
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